


Hearts the Keener

by Lasegreen



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Adventure, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Politics, Take a Third Option
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 04:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9303386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasegreen/pseuds/Lasegreen
Summary: Eyhild has a role to play as Dragonborn, whether she knows how the story should go or not. But if nothing else, the Synod trained her to look further ahead—and to be wary of secrets. She’s not about to keep her enemies’.





	1. Out of the Dark

“We saw that big dragon again,” Eyhild announces without preamble, shutting the wardrobe’s false panel behind her with a clang.

Ever since the fight on the borders of the Reach, the sense of something winged under her ribs has kept her moving with restless energy. Evening is coming on after a third full day of travel in the freezing rain, and because she ushered Lydia down the secret stairs ahead of her she can see her friend’s shoulders slumped with weariness. Eyhild knows why the strain of their hurried journey has hardly touched her by comparison. Like the other dragon souls that have flowed flaming into hers, soon it will go quiet—and with it the need to curb a temper not her own. If this is what it means to be Dragonborn, she’s growing used to it.

That thought cheers her, leaving her mood so at odds with her words that at the foot of the stairs Delphine exchanges glances with Lydia: incredulity from the Blades agent turned innkeeper, a long-suffering grin from the housecarl.

“You didn’t confront him, did you?” Delphine says.

“Oh, she did,” says Lydia, still grinning.

“I saw him circling something, and I realized it must be one of the burial mounds. Like at Kynesgrove.”

At the time, Eyhild was thinking only of the damage one more resurrected dragon could do. She’d set off running across the wet fields with no more than an outraged _hey!_ and Lydia’s shout of alarm fading behind her. She falters, realizing how foolhardy she must sound, but Delphine has a simple question. “Where?”

Eyhild goes to the map on the table. “Here, south of Rorikstead.”

“No, my Thane, it was this one,” Lydia corrects her with exaggerated patience, pointing to another of Delphine’s tickmarks. 

“Oh. Yes, thank you, Lydia.” Eyhild says meekly. The tickmark is almost a day’s travel farther south than her guess, but mistaken bearings are far from the worst of her ignorance. Her unremarkable Nord looks prevent her from standing out in Skyrim, but her family comes from Bruma on the other side of the Jerall Mountains; she made her first, disastrous border crossing only six months ago. She often thinks she is blundering through a role that everyone else expects her to understand.

Lydia just nods and bumps their shoulders together companionably, the steel pauldron tapping against the moonstone. Eyhild looks up and sees the twinkle of humor in Lydia’s hazel eyes. She smiles back. When they first started traveling together, the title of Dragonborn still new and bewildering on Eyhild’s shoulders, she thought her housecarl despaired of her. Now she knows that Lydia’s irreverence keeps the two women on level enough ground to be friends.

Delphine dips a quill into vermilion ink. She slashes it twice across the mark Lydia showed her, making a cross: one more dragon raised from the dead, and one less to fear.

“So,” she says eventually, “you wanted a closer look?”

“I wanted to stop him,” Eyhild answers, ignoring the sardonic note in Delphine’s voice. “He Shouted me down and flew away. Left the resurrected dragon to Lydia and me.”

“Like at Kynesgrove. I wonder why he didn’t kill you himself, now that he knows what you are…”

“He tried at Helgen,” mutters Eyhild. Her hair drips cold water down the back of the stolen armor, and she realizes she’s reached up absentmindedly to rub the back of her neck. She lets her hand fall.

“He’s a coward,” Lydia realizes aloud.

“I don’t know about that, but at least you made it out alive. The embassy was dangerous enough without you picking fights with dragons,” says Delphine.

Her tone is sharper than before, and Lydia stirs indignantly. Eyhild holds out a hand to stop her, needing no defense; it’s true enough. She remembers the smell of the embassy cellar, of sawdust and elven perfume failing to mask the reek of death. The buoyant feeling of the dragon soul turns sour in her stomach.

“They killed Malborn,” she confesses. “I—I wasn’t fast enough, even with the Voice.”

“Damn,” says Delphine, without blame or even much heat. Eyhild realizes the risk to the hapless bartender must have been part of Delphine’s plan. Her flicker of outrage dies unspoken when she meets the Blades agent’s gaze and sees the look of bleak defeat there.

But Delphine reaches across the table and pats Eyhild’s arm. “I’m sorry. You’ve had a hard few days. Look, your gear’s safe in the chest over there, as promised. You should find some dry clothes.”

With that, she goes back to the inn upstairs. Despite her exhaustion, Lydia reaches the stowed gear first and busies herself looking for Eyhild’s spare clothes as well as her own. Eyhild sighs, drops her swordbelt to the floor, and shucks the stolen cuirass over her head. The burlap sack she carried back from the embassy is damp, but when she unties the opening she finds the three leather-bound notebooks inside dry enough. She wipes her fingers ineffectually on her tunic before she sets them out on the table. Lydia tosses her a bundle of dark blue fabric: her old robes, frayed at the wrists but clean, their familiar enchantment coursing in every thread. She puts them on gratefully.

Delphine returns a few minutes later with towels and mulled mead, both warm from the kitchen. She raises an eyebrow at the change of clothes. “I didn’t know you were a Synod mage.”

“I’m not anymore. Seven years was enough,” Eyhild says, and shakes her head. She trades a mug for a folded slip of vellum, explaining, “The Thalmor know nothing about the dragons.”

Delphine takes it, but frowns at her. “Really? That seems hard to believe.”

She nods toward the note. “They think the _Blades_ know something.”

The vellum makes a crisp sound as Delphine shakes the fold loose, and she snorts bitterly. “Ironic—the old enemies assume that every calamity must be a plot by the other side…”

“They also think they can find a Blade. Do you know someone called Esbern?”

Delphine nearly drops the third cup of mead, slopping it over her fingers. Eyhild steps forward in alarm, but then she sees that Delphine’s face is alight with triumph.

“Esbern? He’s alive?” Her voice climbs the octave; she’s almost laughing. “I thought the Thalmor must have got him years ago. That crazy old man…”

She turns away smiling. Eyhild bends to dry her hair, and her confirming hum is muffled. Delphine goes on as if talking to herself. “Figures the Thalmor would be on his trail, though, if they were trying to figure out what’s going on with the dragons.”

“Because he knows the lore?” says Eyhild, looking at her upside-down.

“None better. He was obsessed with it, really. I guess he wasn't as crazy as we all thought. How did you know?”

“I stole the ambassador’s files. She says he’s an expert. ‘Capture Only’.”

Delphine’s face settles into a grim stillness. She says only, “May I see?”

“On the table. They’re after you too, you know—‘Capture or Kill.’”

“Should I be proud, Dragonborn?” She picks up the first notebook, and Eyhild knows that it is Delphine’s own because she sets it back down after flipping perfunctorily through the pages. As soon as she has a hand free, Eyhild reaches for Esbern’s dossier instead and passes it across.

Lydia has retreated to a corner to change; there’s a moment of quiet as Delphine reads about her fellow fugitive. Eyhild sips her mulled mead, listening to the muffled footsteps and conversation from the taproom upstairs. Sven’s voice rises above the comfortable noise, singing: _Down with Ulfric! The killer of kings…_ Eyhild winces, and taps her fingertips thoughtfully on the cover of the third notebook.

“The ambassador doesn’t keep very thorough notes, does she?” Delphine complains after a few minutes.

“I don’t think she knows much about Esbern. Or you,” Eyhild points out.

“And still less about the Dragonborn, so much the better! But you’d better get to Riften before the embassy can send word. Because, gods help us, the Thalmor are right: Esbern will know how to stop the dragons if anybody does.”

Eyhild asks, “Do you know where to start? The Thalmor haven’t found him…”

“Yet. As far as we know,” Delphine corrects her. She considers. “He’s probably down in the Ratway. It’s where I’d go.”

“Thanks.”

“Whose file is that? It’s thicker than mine or Esbern’s,” Delphine says, noticing the third notebook.

Eyhild holds it out to her. “See for yourself. I think I know what to do—after Riften—but if I’m wrong…”

“Oh?”

“If I’m wrong, saying what I think might mislead you. Please.”

Delphine glances across the room at Lydia, who crosses her arms and gives no sign of her own thoughts. Then she looks at the first page of the dossier.

 _“Asset?”_ Delphine practically hisses. Eyhild says nothing. A few minutes later the Blades agent mutters a curse tinged with sympathy, and then she cocks her head in confusion. She flips backward several pages and reads again more carefully. In the long silence, there’s a soft snore from the direction of the gear chest: Lydia has dozed off sitting upright on its lid, her head tilted back against the wall, so worn out that sleep overcame her almost as soon as she was off her feet. Eyhild feels like pacing.

Finally Delphine gives the dossier back to her. “Go to Riften,” she says.

“I’m not leaving your friend to the Thalmor, don’t worry,” Eyhild says with feeling.

“You know what I mean. I said before that they wanted Ulfric’s rebellion to last. I was wrong about Helgen, but only because it’s twenty years too late! You’ve proven the ambassador had nothing to do with the dragons, now don’t try to fight two wars at once.”

Eyhild says ruefully, “She probably knows Lydia and I were part of the attack on Northwatch Keep by now.” Then her head jerks up. “Oh. Oh, Divines.”

“Dammit, you could have told _me_ that before I sent you to the embassy!”

“But this is why the Thalmor wanted Thorald Gray-Mane, don’t you see?” Eyhild cries in dismay. “He knew his family name was more important than anything he’d done. Not a Jarl’s son, but close enough to sow chaos…”

“Slow down. What’s this about?” Delphine looks intrigued.

“You mean… but everyone in Whiterun seems to know, already. The guards have been congratulating me on my choice in enemies,” Eyhild says.

Delphine shrugs. “Maybe there was less to the rumor than you thought. Some of Jarl Balgruuf’s men are shrewd enough to fit the pieces together. You said the Thalmor were after the Gray-Manes?”

So she has to tell the story from the beginning. Delphine listens while Eyhild tells how she stopped to help Fralia Gray-Mane for no more reason than that the Battle-Borns had the old woman outnumbered, and how she learned after she accepted an invitation to dinner that she was really being brought into a deadly secret. She describes the lonely fort on the northern coast, and here Delphine asks her to wait while she spreads maps and fresh parchment across the table. They work together to pin down the approach from the narrow beach to the back gate, the distance across the courtyard to the keep, the layout of the prison below.

“From what I’ve heard, the Thalmor haven’t moved back into the place,” Delphine says. “But if they do, I’ll know what to expect.”

“You’ll stop them?”

“Not if you beat me to it,” Delphine deadpans, but Eyhild doesn’t smile at the compliment.

“They’d left a dead body to rot in its chains, where the prisoners would have to look at it while they…” she begins instead, plaintively.

“Hush. You stopped them.”

“But it was like that again at the embassy.”

“You stopped _them,_ too, didn’t you?”

In the morning Delphine helps Eyhild and Lydia pack their gear while she gives them instructions in no particular order: how to reach Riften unnoticed, how to know whether the Thalmor were tailing them, what to tell Esbern when they found him. They set off feeling almost like children escaping from lessons. The icy rain from the night before has cleared away, and the day breaks warm for Sun’s Dawn with the wind out of Falkreath. Eyhild pushes back her hood to feel the slanting sun on her face.

From somewhere by the riverbank comes the steady sound of someone chopping wood, and the sunlight picks out the golden hair of the man working in the lumberyard. Eyhild is surprised to recognize Ralof the sawyer’s brother, a fire-forged friend. He stops and lifts his hand in greeting when he notices her. She waves back. He seems scarcely less conspicuous in farm clothes than in his Stormcloak blue, and she worries: though the guards here are loyal to Whiterun, unlikely to betray a local man to either side in the war, it does not make him safe. He should be in Windhelm…

“Do you think Delphine is right about that file?” she asks Lydia. 

The housecarl only repeats what she said when they first spoke about it, in Dragon Bridge the day after the embassy party, hiding at the inn and reading the spoils of Eyhild’s raid until they dared to cross the river. “He should know the truth.”

Eyhild sighs. “Then we agree. Maybe we should split up.”

“You’ll need me in Riften, Thane,” says Lydia pointedly. “Have you seen the place?”


	2. The Rat and the Lioness

“There's the Blades agent! Kill— _aagh!”_

Eyhild is halfway down a flight of steps in the fetid maze that Riften calls the Ratway, and the Thalmor soldier is no more than an arrogant voice and a flash of gold in the gloom below her. The burst of flame leaves her fingertips almost before she realizes she is readying the spell. It misses her target, of course; but it strikes the wall close enough to his head that he can’t help flinching back from the heat and the sizzle of wet rock. Neither can he afford the distraction. In the time it takes him to prepare his own magic in retaliation, Eyhild leaps down and closes the distance with sword drawn.

It’s an awkward fight, each caught off guard by the other and hampered by the tight spaces of the tunnels. Eyhild hears Lydia call out like a hound on a scent and then the crackle of another mage’s lightning. _The officer,_ she thinks. Then her opponent drives his armored elbow into her throat. Her head slams backward into the stone wall. Coughing, unable to draw breath, she tastes blood—but there’s no time to recover, she has to get her guard back up—

Something whistles past her face. In the next instant there’s a horrible wet crunch and her opponent drops out of her line of sight. A woman’s face glares across the gap. At first Eyhild thinks the stranger must be standing half in shadow, but then she sees that the effect comes from war paint: one side of her face is darkened in a broad vertical stripe. Tall, straw-haired and broad-shouldered, she might be the most visibly Nordic woman Eyhild has ever seen.

“Thanks,” Eyhild gasps.

The stranger drags her battleaxe out of the dead elf with a look of disgust. “Those sons of skeevers at the gate! They’d let a dragon through if it bribed them.”

It never occurred to Eyhild to wonder how Thalmor soldiers gained entrance to the seat of a Stormcloak-aligned hold. She might have wondered why that was the first thing on the stranger’s mind, but she has no time to respond. Somewhere in the tunnels, Lydia begins to scream: a ragged sound dragged through gritted teeth. The stranger sees the horror on Eyhild’s face and turns grim, raising her battleaxe to guard position. 

“Come on!” Eyhild croaks out, and the woman follows her.

Sound echoes strangely in the tunnels, and the fight has separated them more than Eyhild expected. Precious minutes pass before she comes upon the Thalmor wizard, intent on her prey. Lydia crouches off-balance in a corner. She’s trying to brace herself against the onslaught of magical lightning, but it flows over her shield and up both her gauntlets. Her sword is lost somewhere in the muck; she can’t find the leverage to throw her weight forward. 

The mage seems in no hurry to end the fight, confident that her target can no longer strike back: she’s feeding a fraction of her power into a torturous sustained shock, nursing her own reserves. The tang of electrified air stings in Eyhild’s nostrils as she draws in a breath.

_FUS_

The Shout breaks clear of her injured throat like a wild thing, perfectly formed and clawing destruction in its path. She can’t breathe at all for the sudden tearing agony, but the mage stumbles backward under the force of it and loses hold of her spell. Lydia strikes out blindly with her shield, screaming defiance now instead of pain. The lingering charge numbs Eyhild’s fingers when she drives her own weapon into the elf’s back.

Lydia staggers back upright, wild-eyed. “There must be a third.”

“Not that I’ve seen,” Eyhild wheezes, though she too knows the size of a Thalmor patrol. Pain blazes in her throat. She has to lean against the wall for a moment, forcing her breathing to slow, before she can hold out a hand to her friend. Golden light wells in her cupped palm. “May I?”

“Only if you do yourself too. What’s wrong with your voice?” 

Lydia returns her steady grip but averts her eyes from the handclasp. Eyhild is used to that little compromise between pragmatism and the Nord distrust for magic. Just now, with Lydia’s tormentor lying dead between them and strands of her dark hair still floating with magical charge, Eyhild doesn’t blame her for it.

“I was careless,” she says after her own spells have faded away. Lydia stands straighter, if a little stiffly; Eyhild’s head is beginning to throb where it struck the wall, but she can do no better now. “I’d have died if not for…”

“Mjoll,” the stranger supplies. She straightens, having bent to pick something up off the floor: Lydia’s sword, which she holds out hilt-first to its owner. “You’re strangers here too, eh?”

“Yes,” says Lydia.

“And the justiciars? Did they come here for you?” Mjoll asks.

Lydia says nothing, looking to Eyhild. She hesitates. _Be careful who you trust,_ Delphine told her back in Riverwood. She did not say _trust no one._ Yet even her contact turned out to be a scoundrel who refused to help without drawing Eyhild into some criminal dispute. It has taken a whole morning of threats and hidden motives to get them this far, and she is weary of guessing.

“Not exactly,” she says after a pause.

Mjoll scowls at the equivocation. “You can’t bring them down on the people here! There are too many who can’t defend themselves.”

That settles it. She takes the chance. “The justiciars want an old man named Esbern. He’ll be trapped in the Ratway unless we find him first. Do you know him?”

“Not by that name, but—a Nord from outside the Rift, like us?” Mjoll tilts her head. Diplomatically, she adds, “Expecting trouble?”

“Yes!”

Mjoll leads them to a door that looks as if it belongs in a treasury house or a prison. Eyhild cannot remember what Delphine told her to say to the man on the other side, and she is too tired and bruised to reason with him. She baldly announces herself as Dragonborn instead.

“By Ysmir. That was a Shout, before?” Mjoll whispers.

To her surprise, it proves persuasive; the next sound from within is a latch clicking open. Then a second latch clicks, and a third. Eyhild looks back nervously. If there were one more Thalmor agent in the Ratway after all, or another patrol, they would be cornered here. She catches Lydia doing the same, and the housecarl shakes her head tightly. But the tunnels are quiet, for the moment, except that somewhere down a dead-end passage they can hear an old woman muttering nonsense to herself.

“There we are!” Esbern says at last. “Come in, come in! Make yourselves at home! That’s better. Now we can talk. Or—”

He pauses at the sight of them, dismay in his pale eyes. Lydia stumbles on the threshold and flinches away when Eyhild, hardly steadier on her own feet, tries to take her half-healed arm. In the firelight Mjoll looks mud-spattered and sleepless.

“Thalmor,” Eyhild explains. “There may be more in the Ratway.”

Esbern looks as tired and colorless as the beggars they passed. He keeps his room warm, perhaps to drive out the damp; it smells pleasantly of woodsmoke and old books. It seems to take all his strength to heave the door shut behind them. The old man leans there a moment, taking in the sight of his hiding place as if committing it to memory. When he moves again it is with jerky, decisive strides.

“Then sit down and let’s have some real light,” he says briskly.

He casts a shining ball to stick to the ceiling overhead, succeeding on the second attempt: his hands are shaking with more than age. Eyhild recognizes the spell and tries to match it, intending to diffuse the black shadows the single magelight casts into the corners of the room. But the spell fails, her own reserves utterly spent. The glare stabs at her headache. Esbern frowns at her thoughtfully.

“Are you a priest, then?” Mjoll asks him.

“Hm? No, no, my quarrel with the Thalmor isn’t about Talos. At least, not directly.” Esbern smiles and makes a shallow but courtly bow. “I am sorry we haven’t spoken before. You must be Mjoll the Lioness.”

“Aye,” she says, charmed.

“So. You’ve really found the Dragonborn?” He looks from Mjoll back to Eyhild, wide-eyed with expectation.

Eyhild thinks she would rather have heard doubt, even dismissal, than this desperate intensity. She flushes and looks at the floor. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”

“Then… there is hope after all,” he breathes. He reaches toward her face; Eyhild starts to back away until she sees the healing magic gathering in his hands. She shuts her eyes and lets him work, the old man’s fingers cool against her scalp. The relief in his voice matches her own. “For so long, all I could do was watch our doom approach, helplessly.”

“Doom? You knew—you’ve known for years that the dragons would return, haven’t you?” Eyhild realizes, her eyes snapping open.

“Dragons, pah! They can be killed. The Blades killed many in their early days as dragon-slayers,” Esbern says, releasing her with a look of satisfaction.

_Easy to say,_ Eyhild thinks as he turns to help Lydia. “I know, but—”

“No, dragons are merely the final portent of the End of Days. One by one, I have seen the signs from the prophecies fulfilled. And now Alduin has returned!”

The housecarl stops unbuckling her gauntlets to stare at him, angry red marks barely showing below her elbows. “Alduin?”

“The Dragon from the dawn of time—” he begins, mistaking her disbelief.

“—the World-Eater,” says Eyhild. 

Beside her, Lydia shifts in surprise; Esbern stops to look at her, seeming relieved at her sudden show of comprehension. Eyhild grumbles, “They do tell the old tales in Bruma, you know. But I don’t understand. There must be dozens of dragons coming back. How can you know he’s among them?”

“Well, now. How could his followers return unless he willed it?”

“You mean… that big black one that’s been raising the others… is Alduin the World-Eater,” Eyhild says slowly.

“Yes! Yes! You see? No one can escape his hunger, here or in the afterlife! Alduin will devour all things and the world will end. Nothing can stop him! I tried to tell them…”

Lydia makes a choking sound. “And I called him coward!”

“But if nothing can stop him, why am I here?” Eyhild breaks in. Esbern stops mid-sentence to stare at her. Frustrated, she goes on, “All this time—I’ve done what people told me the Dragonborn should do, or what no one else seemed able to do, and I’ve slain dragons, and I’ve hoped that sooner or later it would start to make sense! If the world is ending, what am I _for?_ I am Dragonborn…”

Esbern’s face brightens, and he does not have to explain; the wished-for clarity arrives at last. Eyhild suddenly understands where the steps that seemed laid out before her have been leading all along. For once, she’s not afraid—not as she was when the Whiterun guards gathered in awe around the burning corpse of a dragon, or when the summons thundered down from High Hrothgar that same afternoon. She is glad it never occurred to her to run away. She lifts her chin.

She says again, more firmly, “I’m Dragonborn. It must be for a reason.”

“About time you knew that,” Lydia mutters, and her voice is full of pride.


	3. The Northward Road

When they emerge from the Ratway the sun is low over Lake Honrich, casting vague reddish shadows over the Riften streets. They file warily out onto more of a dock than a street, the wooden planks lapped by the stagnant and stinking water that pools under the city. The market square stands on stone built more than a man’s height above the canals, and they can hear the cries of the merchants over the murmur of townspeople heading for the taverns at the end of the day. The noise should be reassuringly mundane, but from what Eyhild has seen of Riften, the presence of bystanders offers no safety. 

If she is on her guard, Esbern is near panic. The slap of running boots on the planking overhead makes him shrink back against the wall, conjuration magic flaring from his fingertips. Eyhild raises a placating hand. “Wait, what are you—?”

“Mjoll, there you are!” a new voice calls to them.

Mjoll strides forward to meet the soldier who jogs down the steps to their level: not a Thalmor justiciar but a Riften city guard, her movements stiff with age or old injury. She slings her battleaxe over her shoulder, relieved to see a friend. 

“Is that Velaug?” Mjoll calls back.

The guard sheds her helmet in answer. Velaug has white hair and a crooked nose, and the run has made her breathless. “They’re saying there’s a fight down in the Ratway! Thalmor agents, or Thieves’ Guild, or both…”

“It’s Thalmor at least,” Mjoll tells her. “I want a word with the gate guard later.”

“Talos’ sake,” Velaug mutters, shaking her head. 

“It will wait. Do you want my help for now?” says Mjoll. 

The question reminds Eyhild of a man she befriended in Morthal: too headstrong to join the guard, but determined to protect the town by his own strength of arms, alone. If Mjoll were the same way, it would explain why she put on armor and followed two Thalmor agents into the Ratway.

“Yes, but—Mjoll, are these strangers with you?” Velaug asks, seeing Eyhild and the others behind her.

Mjoll sidesteps and nudges Eyhild forward. “Velaug, this is the one the rumors from Ivarstead told us about.”

The old guard laughs. “You’re the one Shouting dragons out of the sky? Good! They’ll underestimate you.”

“What does that mean?” Eyhild asks, stung despite Velaug’s friendly tone.

“Oh, don’t take it to heart, lass. I didn’t expect the Dragonborn of legend to be such a mousy little thing, that’s all. You could stand to swagger more. Remember you’re a Nord.”

Before Eyhild can object further, Mjoll turns and sets a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Right, then. Dragonborn, I am glad to have met you. Can you make it to the city gate?”

“Don’t worry about us,” says Lydia.

“Then I think we must part ways now. You see, my dragon to be slain is the corruption here in Riften. Yours must take you far from here, and the farther your friend is from the Thalmor by morning, the safer all of us will be.”

“You’re right,” Eyhild sighs. She presses her fist to her heart in salute. “You saved our lives. I wish I could repay you.”

Mjoll shrugs. “It’s enough if you hold to your purpose. I wish you luck, friend.”

In the deepening dusk they step through the gates and into the Riften stable yard. Eyhild finds a circle of torchlight to stand in while she pulls her battered map out of her pack. The carriage driver and the stable hand have gone up to the hayloft to feed the animals, and their cheerful conversation drifts down with the loose hay. Eyhild smiles to hear it. The stable hand, Shadr, was almost the first person she spoke to in Riften: she rescued him from a creditor, probably spoiling her first lead to the Ratway when she angered the hard-eyed woman. It’s a comfort to know the morning was not all wasted effort; she can hardly believe this is still the same day.

Lydia stands close to look at the map over her shoulder, but Esbern glances backward in confusion. He points out, “If you have no horses, the southwest gate would have served us better.”

“There are farm families on either side of the lake that might take us in for the night,” Lydia muses aloud to Eyhild. “But you want to press on toward Shor’s Stone, don’t you?”

Esbern asks, “Why the northward road? Did Delphine sell that inn of hers?”

“No,” says Eyhild. “But I have something I need to do in Windhelm. If we must go straight back to Riverwood, it can wait a little longer…”

She looks at him uncertainly, feeling guilty. She dares not even suggest that they hire a carriage, knowing that the driver will not agree to leave Riften before morning, but a journey on foot will be hard on the old man. At this time of year the wild beasts will be hungry enough to attack travelers, and bandits haunt all the roads; whatever they choose, sooner or later they must cross the embattled border into Whiterun Hold.

“An indirect route might be safer, once the Thalmor realize we’ve left Riften. But if we’re to double the length of our journey, tell me about your errand first,” Esbern says slowly.

Eyhild tries to be brief, mindful of the deepening night, but the loremaster keeps interrupting her story: first to find the idea of a Thalmor plot to resurrect dragons preposterous, then to ask a series of questions about the Embassy and the people she spoke to there. When she speaks of Malborn’s death and her escape with the other prisoner, he sighs remorsefully.

“So that’s what happened to Rarnis! Did he make it out?”

“As far as I know, he’s on his way back to Riften now.”

“Well, now. I owe that thief an apology, in the unlikely event that we meet again. He stopped bringing me food almost a month ago. I assumed that guild master of his merely wanted to raise his fee, but it seems I was not careful enough.”

Eyhild frowns. “A month ago? If the ambassador already knew you were in Riften then…”

“Then I’ve had a narrow escape, not for the first time. No matter. We’ve caught up with her now, thanks to you,” says Esbern, with a little smile that does not reach his eyes. “But I still don’t see why you need to go to Windhelm.”

“It’s the records I took from the embassy,” Eyhild explains. “One of them was about Ulfric Stormcloak: proof the ambassador is using him to prolong the war. Lydia and I think he should see it.”

“Oh? What do you hope to accomplish, once he has seen it?”

Lydia frowns at the resignation in the old man’s voice. “Don’t you see? Anything that might put an end to the fighting—”

Esbern says, “Don’t be so sure that anything can. Prophecy is at work here—and the Jarl of Windhelm is a hard, proud man who might lash out at a messenger.”

“I’m not afraid of Ulfric Stormcloak, at least,” Eyhild says. “He wants the Dragonborn on his side. He’s always been kind to me.”

“You’ve met with him before?” Esbern asks, surprised.

“Twice.”

“Well—very good,” he sighs. “I will go where the Dragonborn leads. North, then?”

From the Riften gate to Shor’s Stone is more than six leagues by the road. They cannot hope to go half so far this late in the day, but Esbern is anxious to put distance between them and the city. A cloud bank rolling in from the west captures the last of the sunlight, blazing gold and silver along its edges before fading to black night. The travelers slow their pace, blind beyond the reach of their magelight but unwilling to rest. The scent of forest envelops them. Winter has come and gone and the birches are tipped with green, but last autumn’s leaves still lie in deep drifts under the trees. Eyhild breathes deeply, testing the air for the threat of rain. But the clouds are still high up: dim brown rings circle the patches of light where Masser and Secunda shine through.

Esbern warns them away from Fort Greenwall, so they leave the road and hike eastward. They finally camp well out of bowshot and hopefully out of sight of the crumbling battlements. Bandits live there, the old man says; in the end the Thieves’ Guild is more likely to drive them out, rather than the soldiers the Jarl cannot spare. The war has not yet come to the heart of the Rift.

“Maybe it never will,” says Lydia.

“The world might end first,” says Esbern matter-of-factly.

Over a small campfire they toast bread that Eyhild bought from Riften market that morning and pile slivers of cheese and tomato on it to melt: a messy meal that ends with burned fingers and grit in their teeth, but it’s the first fresh food Eyhild and Lydia have eaten in days. All they have left of the provisions Delphine packed for them is a handful of oats that they save for the morning. They split their last bottle of mead among the three travelers. Esbern declares it the best meal he’s had in some time.

Eyhild smiles ruefully. “I suppose that’s not difficult, if you went a month without deliveries.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have starved. I was debating whether to venture out of the Ratway. Thank the gods I didn’t! But tell me when you spoke to Ulfric Stormcloak. I thought you hadn’t been in Skyrim long.”

Eyhild looks down at her mug, watching the firelight reflected red in the last of the mead. “The first time, well… I nearly spoiled a Legion ambush, by camping in the wrong place. I had no idea there was fighting so close to the border. They took my pack, and when they saw I was a Nord just come from Cyrodiil they said I must be a rebel recruit. They couldn’t let me warn Jarl Ulfric about the trap they’d set.”

She falls silent, remembering the humiliation and terror of that day: the first time in her life that argument availed her nothing, not even her captors’ full attention. For hours she barely noticed the other prisoners, but sat silently cursing the ambition that drove her north. It was foolish then to blame herself, as if she could have known that leaving the Synod would lead to disaster so soon. It is stranger now to think that it was all somehow destined.

Esbern’s eyes widen. “They took you both prisoner?”

“With about a dozen soldiers, yes—” says Eyhild, thinking of Ralof’s efforts to draw her out of her misery. Maybe he only wanted to distract himself from the end of the road he saw coming, but his friendliness saved her life. In the awful moments after the dragon appeared—a confused impression in her memory of thunder and withering heat—she let him lead her to safety.

“So you were at Helgen!” the old man interrupts. “That explains it. Alduin delayed raising his allies to burn one border town. Why? He must have sensed you, the new Dragonborn!”

He begins to chuckle. Eyhild stares at him until he stops.

“I’m sorry. In the end he managed only senseless killing. But it seems having Ulfric nearby confused him.”

“Why?” Lydia asks.

“Because he could Shout, and I couldn’t?” Eyhild guesses.

Esbern nods. “Remember, the Dragon War ended long before Jurgen Windcaller was born. Alduin may perceive time strangely, even for a dragon, but he knows little of the Greybeards. He would expect a half-trained Tongue. For how could the Nords fail to notice a Dragonborn’s talent? And there indeed was the closest Skyrim has to the old Nord Tongues in this age! Fortune has been strange.”

“Well, that was the first time, though I doubt he remembered me afterward,” says Eyhild. “The second was after the Greybeards summoned me.”

Lydia smiles. “I was new to your service then.”

“Yes, and I was afraid,” Eyhild admits. “I saw no choice but to set out for High Hrothgar, but I half-expected to be locked away or made a pawn in some struggle.”

“Not a pawn,” Lydia protests, as Esbern raises an eyebrow. “No one would dare.”

“No one would have dared with Talos, but I’m not like Him,” Eyhild sighs. “I hardly understood what had happened. But I remember seeing the sign at the crossroads, with Ivarstead in one direction and Windhelm in the other, and I thought—everyone said Ulfric Stormcloak could Shout—maybe he could tell me what this meant.”

“That was dangerous,” says Esbern.

“So he said himself. But he told me about the Greybeards, and about himself, before he sent me off. I’m sure he hoped I would come back and join his army as soon as Arngeir was satisfied.”

“You never did,” Esbern observes.

“No, I’m not a Stormcloak. I suppose now I’m returning the favor in kind, instead: truth for the truth.”

Esbern says sternly, “You know it’s not that simple. You’re using the Blades’ methods against the same enemy that destroyed them.”

She was speaking lightly before, playing down her old fears, but at this Eyhild turns serious. She meets his eyes steadily. “Yes, I know. Will you help me?”

The old man jabs at their campfire with a stick, scowling, flushing sparks from the graying coals. Eyhild watches him think, wondering what he makes of the situation. If he balks at the journey to Windhelm now, she cannot abandon him.

“Yes, I’ll help you,” he says at last. “If this is the final end of the Blades, at least I’ll keep my oaths.”


	4. Spiders

In the midafternoon of the next day the travelers hike into Shor’s Stone, and they find the miners’ camp in the midst of the village still crowded with workers. The mine is closed. The miners huddle around their fire, casting uneasy glances at the sky: it was a gray morning, and now the wind blows cold and sharp out of the north. Without the mine there is no reason to stay in town, but the threatening weather keeps them off the road for one more day. Eyhild barters for a meal and they send her to Filnjar the blacksmith, who tells her the story.

“Did he say frostbite spiders?” Lydia asks after she returns.

“Come on, they’re not so bad. I was afraid he’d say they dug up a lost Dwemer ruin, or a crypt full of draugr…”

“Gods help us, is that all in a day’s work to you?” Esbern mutters.

Lydia shivers. “You volunteered to clear them out, didn't you.”

Eyhild has no special fear of the giant spiders. Months ago, when Lydia first found this out, she guessed that it was because there were none south of the Jeralls; the housecarl still bears puncture scars from a spider attack in her childhood, when she learned to dread the low-pitched chatter that precedes a venomous strike. Eyhild has met too many Nords who shared Lydia’s discomfort to believe they all have such a story, but who knows?

“I can handle this myself, if you’d rather wait,” she says cheerfully, checking the straps of her armor.

“I am your sword and your shield,” Lydia reproaches her. “I will _not_ go home and tell Irileth I let you get yourself webbed up and eaten.”

“The miners can't do this for themselves,” Eyhild points out.

Lydia sighs. “Just lead on, thane.”

Two hours later they both reek of sulfur and spider venom. Lydia leans against the posts outside the mine entrance and shuts her eyes, sighing in relief. Eyhild sneezes in the cold fresh air. The first needle-thin snowflakes blow almost horizontally into their faces.

“I didn’t know the mist in there would make it so hard. I’m sorry,” Eyhild admits.

“You were right, though. The miners couldn’t have done it,” Lydia grumbles. “Now where has Esbern gone?”

The sky is already growing dark, but under the blanketing cloud the lights of Shor’s Stone have a softened amber glow. They find the miners’ campfire deserted, burned down to hissing coals. But Filnjar calls to them from the smithy; he and Esbern stand close to the forge, warming themselves while they watch the storm come in.

“You three had better stay the night with me,” Filnjar tells them. “It’ll be a tight fit, but it’s not safe to camp out in this weather. The more so if those spiders put you through the wringer already.”

“At least we have some good news, then. The spiders are gone,” Eyhild says.

“Gone? Every one of them? Why, that’s incredible. Come in, come in!” he says, laughing. Then, as they reach the shelter of the porch and come out of the wind, he abruptly grimaces. “I’ll heat up water for a couple of baths.”

They take turns washing behind a screen set up by the fireplace. Despite Filnjar’s warning, there is space enough in his cellar to spread their bedrolls without getting underfoot. But for once there is no hurry. They sit up for hours listening to the wind dash snow against the sides of the house, wondering how much stronger the storm will grow before it passes. The blacksmith asks a few questions about their journey and then, seeing that this makes Esbern uneasy, he does not press them for travelers’ tales. 

Instead he tells them about Shor’s Stone: how a miner fell down the central shaft—Eyhild winces to think of the long drop—and a priest who was passing through saved her life; how a fire earlier in the winter destroyed one house and scorched the thatch of another before the townspeople managed to put it out, but no one was hurt; how they plan to rebuild as soon as the ground thaws.

“It sounds like a hard life here,” Eyhild comments.

Filnjar shrugs. “We have each other. And even a few strangers willing to help someone other than themselves.”

After so many nights on the road, it feels wonderful just to be clean and out of the weather. Eyhild is not entirely sorry to open the door the next morning to knee-deep snow and the storm still raging, making it impossible to travel. In the time it takes her and Lydia to shovel clear a path to the privy, enough fresh snow has fallen that it covers the toes of their boots again at Filnjar’s doorstep. Esbern grows restless, unable to help with the heavy work and anxious to put distance between them and the Thalmor, though surely the storm must be as great an obstacle to the justiciars as it is to them.

“I’ve been thinking,” Filnjar says around noon, when the wind dies down and the snowflakes fall in soft, fat flakes past the eaves of the smithy. “I can’t afford to pay you what I ought for saving the mine, but I do have something you might need more than gold. Do you know how to use skis?”

“Of course!” says Lydia, delighted.

“Well, I keep a few pairs on hand in the colder months. Mostly for the odd prospector thinking he’ll find anything up Northwind. Now the dragons have everyone scared off the peaks, so it won’t put anyone in a bad spot if you take the skis. It’ll speed your journey.”

They thank him profusely. Eyhild has been dreading the next day’s slog through deep snow, but instead the next morning dawns bright and clear and they glide in single file over the tops of the drifts. They pick up speed on the downhill side of the pass. At noon they round a bend to meet the road that runs eastward into the Velothis, and suddenly the view opens upon the entire Eastmarch lowlands. They stand on the rim of a vast, shining bowl. In the valley the steam of the sulfur pools has driven back the snow, and the wet turf gleams golden in the sunlight.

“Look at that!” Esbern smiles. “At least we’ve come at the right time for the view.”

In the next moment a bolt of lightning zips between Lydia and Esbern, narrowly missing them both before grounding itself in the snow. Lydia wheels, looking for the enemy, but Esbern unleashes a fireball seemingly on sheer reflex—which nearly obliterates the Dwemer automaton that tried to attack them. Twisted wreckage bounces off Eyhild’s boots before her own spell has time to leave her curled fingers.

She lets it drop uncast, still feeling the fireball’s heat on her face. “Shor’s bones!”

“You need to be quicker,” Esbern chides her. “Dragons challenge you first, don’t they? The Thalmor won’t.”

“A metal spider, this time,” Lydia groans, looking at the debris.

Eyhild frowns. She bends to investigate, prodding the largest piece of broken machinery with the edge of her ski. “I’ve never seen one of these outside a Dwemer ruin before. I’d like to know what brought it to the surface.”

“That is unsettling,” Esbern agrees after a moment. Then he adds, “Perhaps I acted too hastily, after all. There might not be enough of it left to tell us.”

Eyhild shrugs, doubting they would have learned much either way. Too much about the Dwemer and their handiwork is still a mystery. She sits on her heels for a closer look, though, and begins to take the wreckage apart more methodically, just in case there was anything to find.

To her surprise the magic inside feels tenuous but familiar, like the voice of a friend speaking in another room. The implacable power of its Dwemer maker has been harnessed by a recent spell, its rigid structure at odds with the freewheeling approach she’s come to recognize in College of Winterhold work. This is Synod magic, and her heart aches suddenly with a strange sense of nostalgia. She does not regret leaving the Synod and Cyrodiil behind, and yet part of her is glad to find this again.

_“You!”_ An outraged voice calls out of the distance.

Eyhild’s head snaps up. On the road below, just rounding the bend where an outcropping juts out from the ridge, a hooded man barrels through the snow to reach them. Two scouts, their Legion armor poorly hidden under thick cloaks, toil miserably after him.

“Attendant Paratus?” she calls back, astonished to recognize him. The Synod-enchanted Dwemer construct suddenly makes sense. 

“Well, who else? Could your College mages have altered the control crystal to _that Dwemer device you’re tearing apart?”_ Paratus answers, his voice rising to a shriek as he sees her hands buried in the workings of the dismantled spider. “Gods, woman, must you destroy all my work?”

“It attacked us,” Lydia points out. She’s placed herself between Esbern and the angry Synod mage, so casually that Eyhild did not see her move, and her hand rests on the hilt of her sword.

Paratus frowns. “That shouldn’t be possible, unless you broke it first.”

“The first we saw of it was its shock spell, out of nowhere,” Eyhild says. “You should know better than to let an experiment out of your sight. But I didn’t know you were still in Skyrim.”

Paratus and the scouts come to a halt when they reach the wreckage, and Eyhild stands up wiping her hands. He says uncomfortably, “I did intend to go back to Cyrodiil, now that my study of the Oculory is done. I’ve… agreed to assist the Legion until an escort can be spared.”

One of the scouts laughs drily. “Maybe we can spare a man after we’ve taken Windhelm. You haven’t seen a supply wagon by any chance?”

The travelers shake their heads, and the soldiers exchange a grim look. The other scout explains, “We think it lost its way in the storm. The mage’s spider was supposed to be light enough to cover more ground in this snow.”

Eyhild looks curiously at Paratus. “You didn’t use Clairvoyance?”

“I’m not a generalist,” he says with disdain.

Eyhild sighs and raises her hand. A silvery trail appears on the road behind her, visible only to her eyes when she turns to look; she points for the legionnaires’ benefit. “The wagon is that way. I’m afraid it’s not moving.”

“Will you come with us?” the scouts ask at once.

They follow the road westward for only an hour before they find what remains of it. The wagon lies shattered on the rocks where it went over the cliff, its driver and one of the guards crushed in the impact. The survivors huddle by a sputtering campfire on the cliff’s edge. Only one of the guards escaped injury, a Dunmer woman whose wide-eyed face is girlish though she must be Esbern’s age. She was marching in the wagon’s trail when it went over; she saw it tilt and then vanish into the swirling snow, with only the screams to tell her what had happened. She spent the night crawling slowly down the storm-battered cliff to put the horses out of their misery and to drag her comrades, one by one, back to the road.

While Lydia coaxes the story from the exhausted, trembling guard, Eyhild looks to the three others she saved. She asks Paratus, “How are you at Restoration?”

For once he does not argue with her. They set to work healing bruises and broken bones. Meanwhile the scouts turn back to find their legate, who evidently commands a camp not many miles from here. Soon Lydia, too, disappears. She returns after a while with firewood, and the guards gratefully help her build up the campfire.

“So, the Staff of Magnus,” Paratus says to Eyhild conversationally, when they have done all they could. “Did you find it in Labyrinthian?”

“Yes.”

“Was that how you hid that Eye of yours from the Oculory?” he asks.

“What? No,” she says sharply.

From the other side of the campfire, Lydia frowns at him. “That isn’t a subject for idle talk, mage.”

Paratus blinks, and then he concedes the point. “No, perhaps not. But someday…”

“Come to Winterhold and see for yourself,” Eyhild says impulsively. “The College probably wouldn’t be there anymore, if not for your help in Mzulft. I owe you a debt.”

His eyebrows lift. “I still don’t trust you, you know.”

In the morning the scouts return with horses, and the legate himself riding behind them: a Nord named Hrollod, with close-cropped hair and a Colovian accent. He looks sharply at Lydia, and then turns to Eyhild with a wary expression. “I know of only one spellsword who travels with a Whiterun housecarl. My thanks for your help, Dragonborn, but I must ask what business you have in Eastmarch.”

Beside her she feels Esbern tense, but he says nothing. She keeps her voice calm. “Am I no longer free to travel, Legate?”

“Don’t be a fool. If you join the rebellion they’ll use you as a symbol,” he says.

She can’t help a wry chuckle. “I know, but they’d get little else from me. I’m too busy to enlist, even if I thought Ulfric was right.”

Unexpectedly, he returns the smile. “Fair enough, for now. Is there another dragon in Eastmarch, then?”

“No, no, not that I’ve heard. I _do_ need to speak to the Jarl,” she explains, ignoring the look of horror this earns her from Esbern. She chooses her next words carefully. “I’m giving him a chance to… change his mind. It might make no difference, and I’d rather not say what I’ve learned—yet. But General Tullius should be told that the Empire has worse enemies than the Stormcloaks.”

Hrollod nods, his eyes narrowing shrewdly. After a moment’s thought he answers her. “Yes. He knows. All right, Dragonborn. If you’ve taken on another impossible errand, I won’t stop you.”


	5. Truth and Mistrust

It’s after dark when Eyhild, Lydia and Esbern make their way up the steps to the Palace of the Kings in Windhelm. The last ragged edge of the snowstorm passed the day before, leaving a sunny thaw in its wake. Now the northern lights tint the shrunken snowdrifts with pink and green. There is no wind. Eyhild can feel the still air growing colder with the onset of night, as if it might crystallize like the skim of ice on the river mouth.

“I’ll be glad to get indoors tonight, whatever the risk,” Esbern mutters, blowing on his hands for warmth.

Eyhild hums her agreement, but it is not the cold she finds oppressive. The stone walls of Windhelm frown down on her as they did on her first visit. She still cannot decide whether the gloom that clings to this city is the weight of fifty centuries, or the grim intent of a fortress at war, but either way the palace is at its heart. She is glad, suddenly and selfishly, that her companions refused to stay behind at the inn.

“Do you think he’ll take the news badly?” Lydia asks her quietly, coming close beside her.

She plucks the housecarl’s hand away from her sword hilt and gives it a grateful squeeze. “I don’t see how he can take it well, but steel won’t be much use. Come on.”

The doorward at the palace gate huddles over a lit brazier, casting his hunched shadow high against the tall doors, and at first Eyhild takes his silver braids as a sign of age. With so many Eastmarch men gone to fight in the war, this safer post was likely reserved for a weak fighter, albeit an honored one: only an officer would be without a helmet, and his cloak is thick bearskin. Then the guard looks up at the travelers, and she realizes her mistake at the same time that his gaunt but unlined face lights up in recognition.

“Lydia?” he calls out, disbelieving.

“Thorald Gray-Mane! I didn’t expect to find you here,” Lydia answers, rushing ahead of Eyhild to meet the Whiterun man. 

They cannot quite have grown up together, born some ten years apart, but here they embrace like kin. Eyhild beams. She met Thorald much more recently, when they freed him from a torture room clear on the other side of Skyrim; she had not known for certain until now that he ever made it to Windhelm. He has not regained the weight he lost in his captivity, but with the color returned to his cheeks, his bruises healed, and his beard neatly trimmed, at least he no longer looks like a vengeful ghost.  
Soon Thorald pulls back, looking troubled. “And I didn’t expect you to come. Jarl Balgruuf hasn’t decided—?”

“—No, I’m on the Dragonborn’s business,” Lydia explains quickly, and Thorald smiles with relief at Eyhild.

“Yes, of course I remember you,” he tells her. “Don’t keep the Jarl waiting on my account. I know you’re on our side.”

“I’m not—is that what you think?” Eyhild stammers, and then becomes indignant. “The Stormcloaks can’t just lay claim…”

His obvious disappointment makes her wince, but he nods in understanding. “So you haven’t come to join us. It’s all right, I only meant that you were welcome here. Jarl Ulfric’s a good man, you know.”

“I think he’d gladly starve alongside his people, as long as he could make the Dunmer suffer worse than the Nords,” Eyhild tells him bluntly.

“That’s not fair,” Thorald protests. “It was a hard winter here, and there’s a lot of mistrust, but when the war is over that’ll change. You’ll see.”

She wouldn’t have come here at all unless she had some hope for the man, but she cannot understand Thorald’s faith in him. “You really think he’d make time for the Grey Quarter if he were High King?”

“He’ll do what is just. I’ll make sure of it,” he promises.

“I’m glad you would try, at least,” says Eyhild, softening. “Take care of yourself, Thorald.”

He claps her shoulder in parting. “And you.”

The great hall is empty save for a lone servant clearing dishes from the board. He looks up at the gust of cold air that comes in with the crash of the gate and nods in greeting, but he takes no further notice of the travelers. Esbern coughs, and the sound echoes. For a moment Eyhild wonders if she will have to wait until morning, after all, and risk telling her story in front of the day’s petitioners. Then a shadow moves across the candlelight still spilling from an open doorway at the far end, and she follows the sound of familiar voices in the war room.

“…Then let them die with their false kings!” Galmar Stone-Fist’s voice rumbles out, louder than the low drawl that preceded it.

Eyhild pauses under the arch, waiting for a break in the conversation. Thorald was not exaggerating when he called it a hard winter: both men look thinner than she remembers, and the half-cleared board behind her showed little sign of leftover food. The loss of Imperial trade leaves no cushion for a poor harvest. With spring approaching, even the carefully rationed stores of the eastern holds will be running out. At least she was right to think the Jarl would share in the hardship.

With a lurch in her gut, she realizes that she is eavesdropping on an invasion plan. The civil war ground nearly to a halt through the worst of the cold, but soon they must capture land or starve. She glances nervously behind her. Esbern has all but melted into the shadows, leaning against a tapestried wall, but Lydia still watches over him and Eyhild both. Her hand has drifted back to her swordhilt.

“The people are still weighing things in their hearts—but not the Dragonborn, it seems,” Ulfric Stormcloak adds, seeing Eyhild waiting there. He leans over the map on the table, looking across at her with their eyes nearly on a level; he is more than tall enough to loom if he wished. She notices that in the northwest corner of the map, someone has marked Northwatch Keep with a pebble. _Good for Thorald,_ she thinks.

Galmar turns to regard her warily. “I hear the elves invited you up to their embassy,” he says. “Why is that?”

“That’s why I’m here. I needed to know whether the Thalmor were causing the dragon attacks somehow.”

Ulfric makes a skeptical noise in his throat, but Galmar looks curious. “Were they?”

“No. But I found this in the ambassador’s notes.” She takes the notebook from her pack and holds it out, moving slowly to avoid alarming the housecarl.

“You _robbed_ the embassy!” Galmar crows, astonishment overriding his suspicion. “How I wish you’d join us.”

But the laughter dies in his throat when he sees the handwritten name on the cover. Ulfric notices first and goes still as ice, his face etched with sudden hard lines. 

He makes no move to take the notebook. Eyhild finds herself holding her breath, waiting for an outburst of temper or distress that never comes, while the notebook grows heavy in her outstretched hand. When the Jarl finally meets her eyes again, she can read nothing in them but the terrible strain of that self-control.

“So. Now you know how much I have to make right,” he says with forced calm. Galmar takes an abortive step forward, moving protectively between the Dragonborn and his liege lord and then seeming to think better of making so obvious a gesture.

Eyhild shakes her head. “It’s not what you think.”

Ulfric frowns at her. “No? What do you want from me?”

“I’m trying to give you something you were owed,” she says, confused in turn. “Won’t you read it?”

“Did you think I’d forget? I know what it must say,” he growls as if she were toying with him.

The notebook thumps softly down on the table. Eyhild says deliberately, “No, lord, you don’t. She lied about Imperial City. By the time you told her anything it was too late. The Dominion had already taken it. If she hadn’t worked hard to make you lose count of the days, you’d have known that as soon as she let you go.”

“But—” He stares at her, stricken.

“You know the ambassador’s handwriting, don’t you?” she asks more gently, and he has to grit his teeth before he can nod. “Then see for yourself. Please.”

“Wait,” says Galmar as the Jarl finally reaches for the notebook, and he turns to Eyhild with narrowed eyes. “You still haven’t told us your stake in this. Do you still refuse to take up arms against the Empire?”

Though she expected it, Eyhild is sick of the question. She thought the influence of the last dragon she killed had long since faded, but something deep in her chest roars up in frustration, and she brings her hand down hard enough on the tabletop to make both men blink. “I have my own damned fight! The dragons are returning because Alduin is Shouting them back.”

“Alduin!” They say the name together: Ulfric recoiling to his full height in sudden dread, Galmar as if learning the answer to a riddle. Ulfric goes on shakily, “If that’s true…”

“Of course it’s true,” Esbern breaks in, stepping into the circle of candlelight. Eyhild had not heard him come into the room. His raised voice is raven-harsh with fatigue. “The coming of the Dragonborn is only the last of the signs that foretell his coming. Until a few days ago, I thought it would be the only one unfulfilled. Besides, she’s seen him.”

“You saw him too, lord. At Helgen,” Eyhild adds quietly. “He was looking for me.”

The notebook closes with a soft clap in Ulfric’s fist. His eyes have gone very wide, but it is not fear that makes the map markers rattle on the table when he speaks. _“Tell me._ Is he hunting you now? Is Windhelm in danger?”

“No, no. I’ve interrupted him twice at dragon mounds, but he fled both times,” she explains.

With a huff of relief, that hint of the _thu’um_ apparently spent, Ulfric leans against the wall behind him and crosses his arms. He gazes at Eyhild thoughtfully. “If Alduin knows you are the only real threat to him, and he hasn’t renewed his attack…”

Their faces both soften, and Eyhild wonders what the name means to them in this breakaway corner of the Empire. When Delphine first showed her she was more than an innkeeper, it was as if she had stepped out of a bedtime story; the ruins of Cloud Ruler Temple on its hill cast long shadows over her childhood home.

“Oh,” Esbern says suddenly, going white, and then he sways and leans hard on Eyhild’s arm.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, guiding him to a chair; she is distantly aware of Lydia running to help and of Galmar pushing past her to hail a servant. Esbern doesn’t answer her at first, but gradually he recovers enough to look self-conscious. He accepts a mug of water passed hand to hand from the man they saw earlier.

“Should we send for the alchemist?” the Jarl asks him sympathetically, and Esbern shakes his head.

“No, I’m all right. We’ve had a hard journey, that’s all.”

“Then you should rest. I’ll have Jorleif find some beds.”

“Ulfric—” Galmar rumbles. They communicate something in a complicated look. Eyhild sees the Jarl reach a decision by the set of his shoulders under the furs; the housecarl sighs and shakes his head.

Ulfric turns to Eyhild again. “Arngeir will know what to do about Alduin. Go to High Hrothgar, but not too soon. I would speak with you tomorrow.”

She has no choice but to accept the offer of room for the night. The beds are softer than at the inn, and the palace is quiet without being eerily so: from time to time there are unhurried footsteps or a murmur of conversation from the handful of inhabitants still on watch. Still, Eyhild lies awake long enough to hear the change of the guard at midnight, and when she finally dozes off she dreams of dragons.

She wakes not to a knock on the door, but to the crash of it being flung open. The intruder appears only as a dark ursine shape blocking the firelit passage; a sliver of cold blue light where her window shutters meet tells her that it is still at least an hour before daybreak. Lydia leaps up from the bed nearest the door with her sword already drawn, guest right or no. Eyhild casts Stoneflesh over her shift, then mutters _LAAS_ at the wall that separates their room from the one Esbern was given. The old man is still in bed, apparently undisturbed.

“Dragonborn! What in Oblivion have you done?”

That gravelly voice can only belong to Galmar Stone-Fist, though some emotion strains it to a creaking higher register. He sounds as if he has run from the other side of the palace. Impatiently, he shows them his hands are empty.

“I’m not threatening your liege, girl,” he tells Lydia sourly. “But I need an explanation. If Jarl Ulfric’s not here, then he’s not in the palace.”


	6. Clear Sight

Eyhild blinks at him. “But this place is a fortress. How—?”

“What?” For a moment Galmar looks equally blank-faced, but then he realizes what she assumed. “No, there was no attack. Something in that accursed elf’s records made him run for the hills. I need to know what it was before one of his enemies seizes the moment.”

“He’s left before, without you knowing?” Lydia says. He glares at her, and she meets his gaze undeterred. When she finally sheathes her sword, the gesture is more contemptuous than conciliatory.

He says, “You’ll know what it’s like soon enough, unless your thane is as much of a milk-drinker as she looks.”

“You have a funny way of asking for help,” says Lydia.

“You have a funny way of helping,” he retorts, and he squints at Eyhild through the shimmer of her protective spell. “First you show the Jarl his own secrets. Then you scare us with talk of the World-Eater…”

“I have asked nothing from you,” Eyhild points out.

“Aye, now, that worries me most of all,” he snaps. “I don’t believe you carried stolen documents all the way across Skyrim just to ease Ulfric’s conscience, so what was it you wanted him to see?”

Eyhild has had days to consider her case, but she was not prepared to be jolted from a sleepless night to argue with the bloodthirsty old warrior. She is unable to keep a warble of desperation out of her voice. 

“The fact that the ambassador keeps such a record, and keeps it current, should be enough to tell you she sees the Jarl as a tool. She wants to keep the Nords busy killing one another until no one is left to fight the Dominion.”

His face twists like a man reminded of an old wound. “You’re trying to stop the war, then? It’s not that simple.”

“I couldn’t let her lies stand, that’s all. The Jarl can do as he chooses. If you want my help finding him, let me put on my armor.”

He huffs. “Fine. Meet me at the gate.”

Fifteen minutes later, the guards let her out into the icy stillness of the Valunstrad. She wraps her cloak shut around her, trying vainly to trap some of the relative warmth from the palace. Galmar has been pacing. He raises an eyebrow when he sees that she has come alone.

“Your housecarl let you out of her sight after all, then,” he observes.

Eyhild nods. “She didn’t want to, but…”

“You needed her to guard the old man,” Galmar finishes for her. “He must be important.”

“The Thalmor think so.”

He accepts this with a grunt. “More intelligence from the embassy?”

“That, and there were justiciars hunting him in Riften—don’t worry,” she adds, seeing his eyes widen. “If any survived to follow us, we lost them days ago.”

She does not tell him about Delphine. The other Blade will be angry that Eyhild ignored her warning; but if she thought the risk of coming here too great, at least she need not share in it. Galmar turns on his heel once more and sets off abruptly for the city gate, moving at a pace that forces Eyhild with her shorter stride to half-jog in his wake. A priest, up early, stares at them from a doorway at the end of the Valunstrad as they pass. Galmar ignores the greeting the priest calls after them.

They hike downhill to the city gate in silence and continue southward. When they pass the city stables without slowing down, Eyhild speaks up. “Shouldn’t we see whether he took a horse?”

Unexpectedly, Galmar chuckles. He says to her look of surprise, “He won’t have. You’ve never seen the Jarl on horseback, have you? He still rides like a monk. No, he won’t have gone far. I’m just not sure of the direction.”

He turns his attention to the ground instead, searching for bootprints. The snow is days old, and there are many fresh tracks even at this hour: a Khajiit caravan arrived in the night, and a few workers from the outlying farms are already abroad. At first Eyhild waits. She’s no hunter. In Skyrim, she has come to rely on Lydia’s woodcraft instead of her own. Soon, though, Galmar seems at a loss. He curses under his breath, and then he startles violently at the noise of Eyhild casting Clairvoyance. 

“What are you doing?”

“Finding the trail,” she says, pivoting slowly on her heel until the illusory path stretches out before her feet. She points southwest, in the direction of the bend where the White River flows to meet the Yorgrim. “This way.”

Galmar sighs. “I take it the elves can do that, too.”

She darts an annoyed glance at him before setting out on the trail, but does not bother to answer. He follows her without further complaint. Perhaps he has resigned himself to the enemy’s methods, just in case the search became a race.

At first they are able to keep to the road. Every few minutes Eyhild stops to cast again and correct course, but they cross the bridge in good time and turn southward. The sun comes up bright and clear over the shoulders of the Kynesgrove hills, but there is still no trace of the Jarl. Indeed, unless he marched directly to his destination, the spell would not take the same path; she has committed them to the magical route after less than a furlong.

Five miles from the city gate, the White River churns in the gorge cut through the lip of the sulfur flats. The name of the river is apt today; the water is milky with sediment from the sudden thaw, and far upriver Eyhild hears faintly the roar of the last set of falls. Her Clairvoyance spell leads her around the foot of a rocky hill and then, suddenly, straight toward the drop. She lets it gutter out. There could be no crossing of that torrent. Surely the Jarl had not—

No. There on a bare stretch of rock, she spots a scrap of blue. A man kneels straight-backed, facing the river. “Galmar, look!”

He pushes back his bear’s-head hood. “Meditating, of course. Come on.”

Eyhild half-expects Galmar to break into a run. Instead he slows his pace, almost sauntering the last few yards to his Jarl’s side. Eyhild trails behind. Ulfric does not look up at their approach, but he slides over to make room on the flat, dry patch where he is sitting. Galmar makes himself comfortable accordingly. He waits. After a while, Ulfric gives in and speaks first. “Go on. Scold me for sneaking out.”

“I’d rather hear why you did. All I know is what the girl told me, and she’s no gossip,” Galmar tells him.

Instead he startles, seemingly at nothing, and then he spreads both hands flat on the stone. “Do you feel that? Sit down, Dragonborn.”

So he did notice her arrival. Circling round and mimicking him, she notices for the first time that the knuckles of his right hand lie crooked, as if his fingers were broken long ago and imperfectly set. As she settles cross-legged with her back to the cliff, she has a brief sensation of wrongness, a tiny imbalance. Then it is gone, and she wonders if it was only her own unease.

“A little earthquake,” Galmar explains for her benefit. “They’re common enough out here, once you know the feel of them.”

Ulfric’s expression turns bitter, and he draws his knees up to his chest. “I forgot I wasn’t on solid ground. Galmar, did she tell you Elenwen would have intervened at Helgen, if the dragon had not?”

A whistling intake of breath. “I should have been there, Ulfric.”

“Aye, maybe you would have seen it. Tullius must have. It would explain his damned hurry to be done with me. But I never thought to look. I should have known better.”

“I don’t see how, and I don’t see what’s changed. We can never trust the Empire as long as it calls her an ambassador,” Galmar says.

“Now I can’t trust myself, either.” The Jarl looks up at Eyhild. “Why didn’t you go to Tullius?”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“You could have shown the file to either side. Why come all this way?”

That thought never occurred to her, but the question demands some answer. She frowns. “It wasn’t the general’s story to tell.”

“You think I must tell it, then,” he says.

Eyhild only nods. He looks away, clenching his fists, and she tries not to stare at him. The damp chill of the rock underneath her seeps through her cloak and leggings. In the distance, far down the southward road, someone is singing: perhaps a hunter or traveling merchant, the tune too faint to make out over the noise of the river.

He must come to a decision eventually, because Galmar suddenly objects. “Words still aren’t enough, you know. The Dragonborn here would have peace on any terms at all—”

“Any terms but Elenwen’s,” Eyhild corrects him.

“If the Moot names me High King, that Thalmor _snake_ will find a way to make use of it,” Ulfric says.

Galmar says, “Not much use, with her head sent back to her Dominion in a sack.”

“Ha!” Ulfric falls silent again, seeming to take some comfort from the idea.

Galmar presses on. “Until then, let her plot in vain. You’re free of her already.”

“No… I thought that before, and I was wrong. It’s time to do something she won’t expect.” He pauses, distracted from his thoughts, and then twists awkwardly to peer back at the road. “Do you hear that?”

Galmar shakes his head, but the singing Eyhild noticed before has grown gradually louder as the singer approached. By now two or three other voices have joined in, and she can make out the tune. It isn’t one she’s heard before, but she hums along for a few bars—and both men look at her as if she’s just stepped on a pressure plate. They, at least, clearly know the song.

“Thalmor,” the Jarl breathes.

“You told me you'd lost them!” Galmar hisses at her.

Ulfric shakes his head. “Did either of you think they'd give up? You know better. Come on.”

There is very little cover between them and the road, but he uses what there is with a soldier's instinct that Eyhild envies as she and Galmar fall in behind him. Even so, he does not look ready for a fight. She and Galmar came fully armed for their search, but Ulfric has only the axe at his belt, and the Voice. Nevertheless, when they are within speaking distance the Jarl stands up suddenly, making the justiciars fumble for their weapons. Eyhild notes with a grim sense of satisfaction that the mage has just dropped a Clairvoyance spell of his own, which must have pointed him toward Windhelm and Esbern.

“Who are you hunting, Thalmor?” he calls out to them.

“Human, if you think you can interfere with our official business—” one of the soldiers begins angrily, striding forward.

“Justiciar!” the mage cuts her off. She returns to her place, scowling, and he darts a meaningful glance at her as he answers the challenge. “Jarl Ulfric. The roads are dangerous for a man alone, especially one with so many enemies.”

“This is my home,” he says.

Still lying flat and out of sight, Eyhild allows the magic she was preparing to dissipate uncast. She expected to ambush Esbern's pursuers, but she looks up at the Jarl and sees him watching the Thalmor as if for the outcome of an experiment. She can't imagine that the confrontation will end without a fight—at most the Thalmor would wait until Esbern left Windhelm to resume their hunt—but Ulfric intends to learn something first.

The mage says, “You cannot keep the world out of your little kingdom. We're investigating a robbery at the Embassy. We believe the thief fled into Eastmarch.”

Ulfric frowns faintly, and though his hands still hang empty at his sides he scuffs his boots a fraction of a turn to test his footing. Eyhild tenses again, but the justiciar soldiers take no notice of the warning sign. The mage waits, watching him carefully.

“However embarrassing that must be for the Ambassador, you do not have my leave to search my lands,” says Ulfric.

“We do not need it,” says the mage. “Go back to your fortress, Stormcloak. You reject the protection of your Empire; you may make demands when you have the soldiers to back them up.”

“Then why—?” Ulfric begins angrily, but the mage brings both hands up and casts a spell that leaves a scarcely visible ripple in the air. Eyhild feels rather than sees it take form, raising the hairs on the back of her neck; then Ulfric staggers backward, struck. Eyhild leaps to her feet.

_FUS RO DAH_

The Thalmor are already turning to go, and her higher-pitched Shout catches them utterly by surprise. The tight formation goes sprawling; in the time it takes them to recover she is upon them with fire and sword. She slashes her sword across one soldier’s throat as he rises, but her advantage does not last. For a frantic moment she fights alone against two justiciars, the soldier pressing close while the mage tries to stab lightning past her ward, and she strains her magical reserves. Galmar moved to help his Jarl first; she hears Ulfric gasp out the words, “It’s an illusion, just go!”

With that the housecarl joins the fight, dodging the atronach the mage throws into his path. It vanishes like a soap bubble with its master’s death moments later. 

The remaining soldier tries to surrender. “I yield, I didn’t know—”

“Oh no, you don't!” cries Galmar, and his warhammer crushes her skull. To Eyhild's look of horror he says, “What would we have done with a Thalmor prisoner? See to the Jarl.”

She wants to argue back, to cite scripture, but Ulfric is still doubled over where the mage's spell hit him. Eyhild knows before she reaches him that she can do nothing.

“It was a Fear spell. I can’t make it pass any faster, but it shouldn’t be long.”

Ulfric simply nods, his eyes squeezed shut. He is staving off panic with slow, deliberate breaths, and though it does not loosen the grip of the spell he does not seem to want reassurance. Finally the magic runs its course, and he sags with relief. 

“The bastards wanted us to suffer,” Galmar growls.

“No, not all of us. They hoped I'd back down from a fight, and when I didn't, they _made_ me back down. Do you see?”

“They'd hardly fight fair,” says Galmar, unconvinced, but Eyhild nods.

“They didn’t want to fight at all, did they? I hope that was worth it.”

The Jarl laughs bitterly. “I hope so too. Galmar, we have work to do.”


	7. Blood and Honor

They discover soon afterward that neither the Jarl in his flight from the city nor Galmar and Eyhild in their pursuit had thought to bring along anything to eat. With the jazbay and the river salmon both long out of season, there is no help for it but to hurry back to civilization. The three of them arrive in Windhelm tired, blistered from the justiciars’ magic, and hungry. Eyhild is not surprised when Galmar steers them toward the inn. 

She remembers Candlehearth Hall from her previous visit, when she was not yet accustomed to the more rustic village inns elsewhere in the province. Knowing the welcome they can expect there, and the long uphill climb back to the palace, she is tempted. But she also remembers what the innkeeper said when a family of Dunmer refugees asked for lodging there.

“Wait,” she says. “We should try the Cornerclub.”

“That bar in the Gray Quarter? Why?” Galmar wants to know.

“Because half the people in this city think their Jarl will not hear them. You could listen to them, this once, lord,” she says, looking at Ulfric.

The idea raises his hackles, and he is too worn out to hide it. He says sharply, “You go too far, Dragonborn. You’ve done us a service, but Windhelm is not your city.”

Eyhild’s heart sinks. “As you say.”

“Galmar? Let’s just go home.”

Galmar darts a dirty look at Eyhild before he answers. “Fine, but you owe me a drink for running off to commune with Kyne, and sticking me with the fighting.”

With her own mood turned sour, Eyhild doesn’t realize he’s joking until Ulfric chuckles. “Sorry, old friend.”

The market square in the Stone Quarter ought to be quiet this late in the evening, with the last of the merchants packing up their stalls for the night. In the relative stillness the woman’s shriek echoes off the stone walls like shattered glass, and then Eyhild hears what is unmistakably Lydia’s voice calling out, “Stop that man! That’s the Butcher!”

She takes off at a run, not waiting to see if Ulfric and Galmar follow her, casting Stoneflesh over her armor without breaking stride. The last few stragglers on the road out of the market dodge clumsily out of her way, confused by the cries behind them and startled by the sight of her magic. But there is no mistaking Lydia’s quarry. The running man’s eyes widen as he spots her, and then he dives into the shadows between the market stalls.

“Hey!” Eyhild yells after him, and then more sensibly, _LAAS_. She dares not use her fire magic in such a place, but she draws her sword and chases after the vague shape of the man.

She nearly collides with Lydia, who must fight the momentum of her heavier armor to turn the corner, coming the other way. The housecarl claps her shoulder in passing with a silent look of gratitude, and they fall in together as if they had never split up. Eyhild knows that all her questions about how her housecarl came to be there, when she agreed to stay at the palace, must wait for the end of the chase. No doubt Lydia wants the story of her day on the road just as urgently.

Their quarry is not prepared for the two of them working together. He darts backward and finds himself trapped against the stone city wall, with his glaring accuser on one side and a strange adventurer, crackling with unspent magic, on the other. He drops the weapon he was carrying. Two wide-eyed Altmer women come running up behind Lydia; Ulfric and Galmar follow Eyhild some paces behind, startled guardsmen swept into their wake by the disturbance.

“What is the meaning of this?” the Jarl thunders.

“We’ve just thwarted a murder,” Lydia answers, facing him squarely. Her voice rings with righteous fury. “This man killed three women in this city that we know of, and he would have killed a fourth just now if I’d left it to the guards. Jarl Ulfric, this man is the Butcher—or will you ignore me as you did Viola Giordano?”

Ulfric recoils from her words as if slapped. Traditionally, Lydia’s position as the housecarl of a guest allows her to speak freely, even to the Jarl himself. The privilege is rarely exercised; he clearly did not expect it at the end of an already eventful day.

The cornered man seems to take heart from the moment of discomfiture. He protests, “Can’t an old man take an evening stroll in peace? This is a baseless accusation.”

Eyhild looks sidelong at the women who followed Lydia. One hovers protectively over the other, who clutches a bloodied sleeve. Their green-gold eyes are fiercely watchful. With the Jarl’s arrival they shrink back; she realizes they are afraid to draw attention to themselves, not trusting Ulfric’s sense of justice. The bleeding woman will not speak on her own behalf. Eyhild speaks instead.

“There’s blood on your knife,” she tells the man, calmly, and all at once the guards who were drawn to the commotion reach for their weapons. “No, don’t pick it up. I’ll do that.”

She soon finds that the weapon is not a straight-bladed dagger like the one she carries for campfire chores, the kind that might be carried on a stroll within the relative safety of the city walls. It has a short curved blade, and a hilt so smoothed and blackened with age that the ornate grips have nearly disappeared. It takes Eyhild some time to recognize the craftsmanship out of context, but she has seen many like it.

“This is original Dragon Cult work, isn’t it? An ancient tool of necromancy, but it’s been sharpened recently. And used, obviously.” 

“Like Susannah,” says Lydia, “and the corpses in the Butcher’s workshop. All were killed and... cut up... with such a blade.”

Lydia turns to the bloodied Altmer woman. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Arivanya.”

“May I see your arm, please?”

“I’m all right, I can heal—”

“Don’t, quite yet, if you can stand it,” Lydia coaxes, sheathing her sword so she can reach out to her. “I want them to see what he did to you.”

Eyhild still has the old Nordic knife in both hands; when Lydia turns away from him the man has just enough space to move before the guards can react. Foolishly he decides to bolt. Arivanya sees and cries out in dismay, too late; the man hooks his foot as Eyhild whirls round and he trips her. She catches herself on hands and knees, skinning her palms on the freezing cobblestone.

_FUS RO DAH_

Ulfric’s Shout slams the man against the wall. He crumples like a broken puppet. Eyhild stays where she is, below the brunt of the blast and unhurt by it, feeling the cold air eddy around her with the force of a whiteout blizzard. She barely hears Galmar swearing.

“Gods damn it all, he’s dead! No way of knowing if you were right, now, unless you’re wrong and another girl dies. How’d you get mixed up in this?” he grouses at Lydia.

“Someone had to,” Lydia answers.

A tense silence holds for the rest of the walk back to the palace, until the last of the guards return to their patrol. Eyhild and Lydia find themselves abruptly dismissed to the guest wing to wash; they’re hardly out of earshot before Galmar mutters something angrily under his breath to Ulfric, who argues back in a barely-audible rumble that nevertheless bears the edge of the _thu’um_ like a thunderstorm on the horizon. 

“They will kill you and you know it!” Galmar tells him, loudly enough that Eyhild cannot help but hear it clearly. The Jarl only sighs. Eyhild glances back and sees them standing close together, their heads bowed in grief or despair.

“I _was_ right about the Butcher,” Lydia mutters to her.

“I know. Well done.”

“The guards called me a busybody for wanting to help. They’re not corrupt like the guards in Riften, but they’re just as useless. They only care about the war, which is to say they’re waiting for Jarl Balgruuf to make a wrong move. I _hate_ this city.”

The room she and Lydia were given stands empty, but someone must have come during the day to make the beds and tend the fire. In the next room they find Esbern in a seat by his own fire, reading. Eyhild knocks politely on the doorframe.

“You’re both back! Come in.”

He had insisted that Lydia could go to the market for supplies while he stayed behind. He tells Eyhild, “I told her I could look after myself for a few hours, and someone ought to make sure we’re free to come and go as we please. She seemed to think the rest would do me good.”

If so, the housecarl is right, Eyhild thinks as she sits on the rug by his feet. The old man must have faced each new day of the journey from Shor’s Stone still tired and sore from the last day’s travel. The toll of it mounted so slowly that it surprises and shames her to see how much better he looks after barely a day spent indoors by the hearth. She says remorsefully, “We should have stopped at the inn last night, or stayed a while in Kynesgrove.”

He shrugs. “If I’d wanted to stop, I would have said so. But at least today I’ve had a chance to look over my notes. It’s good to know I still have everything I brought out of Riften.”

He stops at the sound of a knock on the neighboring door. There’s a pause, and then Thorald Gray-Mane pokes his head into the room. “There you are, Dragonborn. Can I ask you something?”

“I suppose you’d better come in,” Eyhild says, wondering how much else has happened while she was on the sulfur flats. He follows her into the room but declines her offer to sit down, as if he cannot stay long.

“I just heard that Jarl Ulfric is leaving for Whiterun in the morning—it’s not invasion,” he explains hastily. “He’s only bringing a few guards, and he wants Avulstein and me to join them. You said you weren’t here on Balgruuf’s business…”

Lydia frowns. “We told you the truth. We haven’t been back to Dragonsreach in months.”

The wistfulness in her voice makes him sheepish. “Sorry. I’m not the only one who’s homesick, am I? I just thought you might know more than I do.”

Eyhild is equally confused. As far as she knows, Ulfric hasn’t left Eastmarch since he escaped from the wreckage of Helgen. Jarls rarely visit one another, still less across the lines of the civil war. She told Ulfric he must tell the story of Elenwen’s manipulation himself, but it seems a strange way to start.

She shakes her head. Thorald sighs, and adds, “There’s one more thing.”

“What’s happened now?” asks Eyhild, feeling overwhelmed.

He chuckles wryly. “They’re setting the tables for dinner. Come downstairs, or we’ll all get nothing!”

Despite the shortages, this turns out not to be a serious threat. There is salmon caught from the river and smoked the previous autumn, fresh bread and nettle soup, and enough mulled mead to drive away the chill that clings to the hall. When Thorald and the travelers arrive, the guards and servants clustered near the foot of the table stop talking among themselves to stare at Eyhild. She catches the word Dragonborn whispered among themselves. But they go back to their own conversations soon enough, and the meal is only awkward because of the brooding silence of the Jarl at the head of the table. Eventually he stands to make an announcement. The household begins to get to its feet with him, but he impatiently waves them back into their seats. 

“Yes, we have the honor of the Dragonborn’s company tonight. There’s no threat to the city, so you can stop spreading rumors that she comes before a dragon attack.”

This raises an uncomfortable laugh from some of the guards. Eyhild flushes, more self-conscious than before. She never considered how it looked to the Eastmarch guards when she arrived in Kynesgrove just before Alduin did, not so long ago. As always, Delphine seems to have passed unnoticed.

Ulfric glances down at her before he goes on, looking as if he wants to escape more than she does. She finds this strange at first; he is in his own home, and the people looking up at him have supported him for years. Then she realizes that for what he intends to say, his followers’ loyalty only makes it harder.

“I must go to Whiterun to act on the information she brought me. Those of you preparing for the journey have my thanks. You are all true sons and daughters of Skyrim. You swore your blood and honor to me because you love this land. You knew that the Empire could not drive the Thalmor back, but that a free Skyrim can. I have treasured the gift of your trust.”

He pauses. The scattered cheers go quiet. Surprisingly few of his people seem to have noticed the implied farewell in his words. Maybe he is always lavish with this kind of praise, but in that short silence they see that he is struggling to keep his voice steady. Galmar shifts unhappily in his seat, but holds his tongue.

“I was wrong to deem myself strong enough to accept it. I fell into a trap the Thalmor laid for me—for any one of us who seemed _useful_ —and while I was blind to my own weakness, our brothers and sisters died for it. Now that I know the so-called Ambassador’s plan, I can think of only one way to thwart her. I’m withdrawing my claim to the throne of Skyrim.”

There are audible gasps, and then murmurs of argument and protest.

“I’m sorry. If the Hold now regrets naming me Jarl, I’ll step aside. If not, I’ll do what I can to make amends. I hope that with Jarl Balgruuf’s help, the Moot can go forward with open eyes, and no more bloodshed.”

Ulfric sits back down, glaring bleakly down the table as if daring someone to speak up. Eventually the priest Eyhild saw that morning gets to her feet.

“You have our hearts because Talos has yours, my Jarl. What of Him?” she asks earnestly. 

Eyhild wrongly assumed the comfortable temple keeper must be pledged to one of the Eight. In Cyrodiil and much of Skyrim, priests of Talos are as secretive and vagabond as Daedra worshippers, neither giving nor asking for names. It should not surprise her that Windhelm is different, but the risk is staggering. Should justiciars capture this woman, they'd expose half the city.

“I won’t start enforcing the Concordat, Jora,” he assures her. “The Empire fears a second Great War, but they must be made to see it’s better to risk it now than pretend it isn’t coming. Since we cannot simply show them our strength without the Thalmor laughing at us, the Moot will have to find another way. _Ol sahrot denos, ahkrin fent sahrot.”_

He does not translate the last sentence, but Jora the priest of Talos bows in acceptance and a little sigh goes up from the guards. They fill their cups once more and then the meal is over. Ulfric stops the travelers on their way back to their rooms.

“Where will you go next?” he asks, and he looks at Esbern. “A few days ago I’d have offered you refuge here, in Windhelm. Now...”

Esbern shakes his head. “Now you must know that your walls won’t keep the Thalmor out.”

He grimaces. “They told me as much themselves. And I can’t make peace by courier. If you mean to go west, we should caravan.”

“What was it you said before?” Eyhild asks, still struggling with her grasp of the dragon tongue. “As mighty as...?”

“What? Oh. It’s an old saying. ‘As might declines, courage must be mightier.’”


	8. Enemies Within

On the first night out of Windhelm, the Stormcloak caravan makes camp in the woods west of Fort Amol. Some of the soldiers mutter darkly about the necromancers holed up in the Hold’s best defenses, but Galmar insists they don’t have the time or numbers to drive them out now. Eyhild doesn’t mind sleeping under the stars; the night is clear, and though it will be cold toward morning they have a fire and spare blankets.

“I have a question,” Esbern says in a tone that means he has several questions, but he isn’t looking at her.

Instead Ulfric nods to the loremaster. “What is it?”

“You weren’t surprised that the Thalmor allowed your escape, during the war. How did you know?”

He sounds no more than affably curious, but his eyes are sharply watchful in the firelight. Eyhild can guess that he will steer his inquiry toward the word _asset_ at the beginning of the Thalmor dossier; the old Blade cannot help but want an explanation. She sips her salmon and potato soup, content for now to listen.

Ulfric sighs, not fooled by the friendly tone of the question, but the conversation among the soldiers stops as if at the opening words of a storyteller. Realizing this he looks away from the expectant faces, gazing into the fire instead. The words come slowly.

“At the time I thought I’d found an ally. They sent Elenwen a new assistant soon after I... after the torture stopped... and he hated it there. He truly did, I think, if not for the reasons he told me. He said he needed safe passage to defect to the Empire, and that I was no longer watched so closely because I was dying.”

“What was his name?” asks a young soldier. His neighbor kicks his ankle in rebuke, but Ulfric answers the question without complaint.

“Ondolemar.”

The name means nothing to Eyhild, but Esbern sits up straighter. “The garrison commander in Markarth?”

“I’ll come to that. I accepted his help, and he pretended to be my friend. I vouched for him to the legate whose patrols eventually found us. After the war, the Empire would have sent him back to Alinor. I thought that meant certain death, so I smuggled him into Skyrim. I never would have believed he was passing along everything I told him and everything my militia did to the Dominion.”

“When did you learn he was a spy?” Esbern asks.

“After Markarth. They promoted him when I was arrested. He came to my cell to thank me for my help,” he says sourly.

Eyhild says, “You could have warned the Legion.”

“What could I have told them, Dragonborn? That a justiciar serving in the open, protected by their alliance, had just come from spying on a war they had no interest in?”

That night passes quietly, but in the morning and for the next two days the soldiers argue bitterly with one another whenever they think the travelers or the Jarl can’t hear them. Eyhild wonders whether any will slip away, feeling betrayed that the heart of their cause has been compromised from its very beginning, but no one does. They have nowhere else to turn. It makes for dreary company on the road; few are willing to speak to the travelers who put them in this precarious position.

Nevertheless they caravan as far as the Pale crossroads, where they can look northwest across the freshly tilled fields and see the city of Whiterun rising on its hill. Ulfric orders his people to make camp.

“We’ll give Whiterun time to see we’re not a threat,” he explains. “I won’t be accused of ambushing Balgruuf as well as Torygg.”

Eyhild helps Esbern down from the carriage and sees the old man straighten as if relieved of a burden, even as Lydia hands down the packs they will have to carry again for the rest of the journey. Eyhild feels the same sense of relief, though the skis strapped to the outside will be cumbersome now that the snow is gone.

As the Stormcloaks begin unpacking the tents and supplies, Ulfric turns to her with a rueful look. “Dragonborn, will you not come to Whiterun?”

She shakes her head. “Alduin’s still out there, lord.”

“Then at least let me send someone with you,” he says, unhappily conceding the point. “One more warrior might make all the difference if the Thalmor find you again.”

“Yes, it would make one more warrior they could question about us,” Esbern reminds him. “Don’t burden your people, lord. We’ll be fine from here.”

The Jarl takes this personally. “I may have betrayed Skyrim’s trust, but there are true Nords here—”

“Oh dear, haven’t you realized?” Esbern stops him mid-sentence, incredulous but not without sympathy. “There’s neither shame nor honor in giving in when you did. The Blades planned for such things. Go and make it right, now that you have the chance.”

“So I should mind my own affairs, is that it?”

“What will you do?” Eyhild asks him.

It is his own plan, but he does not have to like it. “I’ll tell Balgruuf everything. The jarls of the Old Holds will see it as betrayal, but he’s the only one left who can call the Moot now and expect all the others to listen.”

“And if the Moot crowns Elisif?”

His frown deepens. “Then I’ll bow to the girl. After that... it’s up to her. Go with the gods, Dragonborn.”

Eyhild, Lydia and Esbern turn to follow the southerly branch of the river upstream, leaving the caravan behind. At the top of the first rise Eyhild catches Lydia frowning worriedly after the blue-clad messenger who eventually sets off westward.

“Do you want to go to Whiterun?” she asks.

Lydia turns. “No, thane. I do miss home, and I can’t stand not knowing… but you have to stop Alduin soon, or it’s all for nothing. I still want to help you. Let’s get to Riverwood.”

After days bumping along in the carriage with ungracious company, it feels good to stretch their legs on foot again. The air is full of the green scent of the coming spring. For a few hours, Eyhild can allow herself to forget the civil war behind them and the World-Eater ahead, and simply enjoy the clear weather and the rushing sound of the river on her left. By nightfall they can see the lights of Riverwood twinkling through the trees, and soon the sign of the Sleeping Giant appears as a vague blue shape in the shadow of the inn. A dog barks at them from the edge of the village, and a boy’s voice calls it inside.

In the peaceful twilight, the only warning of the dragon’s approach is a sudden downdraft of copper-scented air that drives her to her knees. It is a single, gigantic wingbeat that slows the monster’s dive, but it still lands on the roof of the inn with enough force to crack the beams. Eyhild casts her mage armor by blind instinct. Behind her, a second bloom of magic tells her that Esbern has done the same.

The inn’s front door opens, and Sven’s frightened face appears in the firelight. Lydia waves her arms at him urgently. “No! Stay inside! Get everyone into the cellar!”

He gapes at her but then complies, slamming the door shut. The dragon rumbles something about _nikriin,_ and it shrugs off Eyhild’s thrown fireball as if it were no worse than a bucketful of water. The thatched roof steams gently beneath it, threatening to catch fire if Eyhild tries again. The dragon is laughing at them, and at her.

Eyhild was not exactly afraid before. For all their implacable power, dragons are predictable beings, and she knows better than anyone how to fight them. But the cool sense of battle urgency turns to cold fury at the sound of that laughter. The last dragon she killed— _Vuljotnaak,_ supplies a voice at the back of her mind—knew her for what she was and fought with a deadly desperation. This one is simply cruel, attacking a village for the fun of watching the mortals scatter.

_FO KRAH DIIN_

She has never Shouted so clearly before. An icy fog billows out before her, veiling the core of sharp needles that strikes the dragon squarely in the face and chest. Arrows whine after it; the Hold guards have come running, and Lydia has her bow strung too. The dragon lifts off shrieking in protest, its long wings clumsy with cold.

Eyhild sprints to meet it, hoping to reach the end of the village in time to block it from attacking the houses. The Hold guards stand transfixed by the sight of the monster flying toward them. She dodges them without looking back, but behind her she can hear Lydia yelling for them to take cover. As it comes closer she can see what she already knew: the dragon’s eyes are on her alone, the tiny mortal who dared to Shout as its equal. She meets that baleful gaze and does it again.

_FUS RO DAH_

It crashes to earth on the road just beyond the Riverwood gate, already snapping at her with jaws quick as lightning. Eyhild ducks back barely in time, not allowing herself to think about the crushing strength in that bite, and she thrusts her sword into the dragon’s neck. The hard scales catch the blade, but the dragon’s own momentum drives it in with bruising force and the dragon growls in pain. She swings at it again, but it retreats just beyond her reach and lifts its head; she sees it preparing to Shout and hurriedly throws a ward spell between them.

So she does not flinch when the dragon ignites the air between them from barely beyond her sword’s reach, but she can feel the gout of flame as if it were a physical weight on her magical reserves, pressing in on her skull. She won’t be able to hold it long, but with the dragon on the ground she can duck sideways and slash its wing before it can stop her. As soon as she steps out of the direct line between dragon and town, a half-dozen arrows whine through the space where she just stood. Lydia has rallied the guards.

The dragon screams in pain and wounded pride. Eyhild can see that it’s beaten, and for a fellow mortal she might have shown mercy. The thought is fleeting. A different part of her exults, glad to punish it for daring to prey on her friends. With a sense of satisfaction she moves to finish the fight—and the dragon’s ruined wing catches her full across the chest.

The impact drives the wind from her lungs and knocks her flat, cracking her head on the paving stones in spite of her mage armor. The dragon does not wait for her to recover. With a hop-step forward it pins her under one heavy talon. Eyhild feels her armor creak and knows that it could crush her to death. It stops as if to gloat: the villagers might destroy its body, but if the Dragonborn dies first then it need only wait for Alduin. Its laughter is scalding on her face.

That wilder part of her mind roars up in outrage. Eyhild can’t draw breath to Shout, but she scrabbles at the pavement and finds that her hands are free. Her ordinary mortal magic remains. The dragon’s face is so close that when she punches upward her elbow passes between the terrible jaws, and she casts her fireball into its throat.


	9. The Sleeping Giant

The explosion belches back in her face; the force of it crushes her into the ground even as the fire of her own spell passes harmlessly over her. She is dimly aware that in the shock of its death blow the dragon rears backward off her chest and overbalances, dead before it can fall. Its head crashes down beside her. The scales begin to waver in the mirage of their own heat.

Eyhild cannot move. Even before the dragon’s soul tears free of the bones, her head is full of dragon voices.

It is like fighting an avalanche. For a moment it takes all her strength to keep from being pulled under the cacophony of wills, both furious and triumphant. Her magic dies in her hands; she cannot concentrate on her injuries or on the human voices that call out to her, seeming very far away. Then in the next moment the dragon voices settle into a single part of her, whole and solid under her conscious thought, and everything goes quiet again. Her whole body is sore.

Someone drops to her knees beside her, letting a bow and quiver clatter to the ground. Eyhild jerks away at the touch of callused fingers on the inside of her wrist, painful against her burned skin, and she opens her eyes to Delphine’s anxious face.

“There you are. You stopped breathing,” she says, sounding breathless herself.

Lydia’s running footsteps arrive next, with Hold guards and townspeople following after. Someone hands a burning torch to the housecarl. Eyhild feels so wobbly that she would rather lie still, but the thought of the people watching makes her sit up gingerly. A wave of nausea follows. The last time she killed a dragon, Vuljotnaak’s restless soul spurred her onward for hours as if it could outrun her. This dragon is different, spiteful in death. She ignores it and heals herself, finding that she has enough magic left after all. Her armor will take more time: she can look down and see the places where scales have gone missing from her scorched and claw-marked cuirass. She feels very small and grubby. _You could have had wings,_ whispers the dragon soul.

“I’m all right,” she says aloud, and she waves away the hands that offer to help her to her feet. “Was anyone hurt?”

Lydia sags in relief. “Just you. Well done, Thane.”

“I guess I can’t complain of your timing,” Delphine says dryly, looking from Lydia back to Eyhild, “but I expected you days ago. What happened? Did you find Esbern?”

“I’m here, Delphine. I… it’s good to see you.”

Eyhild looks back. Esbern sensibly kept his distance from the dragon during the fight, but she can tell by the lingering conjuration magic in the air—and by the wary way the guards make room for him—that he was not idle. He stops short at the edge of the circle of onlookers, looking as if he cannot quite believe his eyes.

“There can be no doubt that you are the Dragonborn of prophecy,” he tells Eyhild, his voice soft with awe.

Delphine smiles. “So now you’ve seen it, too. It’s been too long, old friend.”

The roiling in Eyhild’s gut turns savage. She doubles over, shivering to feel the sweat break out on her forehead, but she cannot vomit up a piece of her soul even if it would poison the rest of her. The dragon’s bones are dry in the ashes at her feet. There is no escape to be found that way.

Torchlight makes her eyes water as Lydia steps close to support her. “Eyhild, what’s wrong?”

_“Nahkahzun,”_ she gasps out, realizing only after she has said it that the unfamiliar word is an answer to her question: the dead dragon’s name, _fury-pride-weapon._ She tries to explain. “The dragon… it hasn’t stopped fighting me…”

“Lorkhan’s eyes!” Delphine mutters, and then her voice drops lower to keep the townspeople from hearing. “Is it safe here? Can you… keep it under control?”

Eyhild nods carefully, thinking of the turmoil in the moment of the dragon’s death and the solid certainty that followed. “It’s already lost. I just need to lie down for a while.”

“Well, I think we can arrange that. Come on.”

The two Blades catch up with one another in half-sentences and inside jokes, even as they walk her back to the Sleeping Giant, and Eyhild does not try to follow the thread of discussion. When she wakes in the small hours of the night she finds that they have set a watch: Lydia is sound asleep in her bedroll by the door, but Esbern is reading by magelight in the room’s only chair.

“’S everything all right?” she asks him blearily.

He sets the book aside. “Ah, you’re awake! I should be asking you that, Dragonborn. Can I get you something?”

She shakes her head. “You didn’t have to sit up with me.”

“It’s no trouble. At my age it’s hard to sleep through the night anyway, but if you’d rather I left you alone—”

“No, I’m up now.” The dragon voices are quiet, and she is suddenly aware that she has not eaten since they stopped for lunch on the road. She sets her bare feet on the floor. “Did you talk to Delphine? I mean, about…”

“About the World-Eater? I did. Why don’t you come and see what my books have to say?” he says, beckoning her over.

Peering with interest at the book in his lap, Eyhild asks, “How did Cloud Ruler Temple have so much dragon lore, anyway? The Akaviri invasion was two thousand years ago.”

“Ah yes, it was never easy,” says Esbern, pleased by the question. “Long ago, of course, dragon lore was a matter of survival for the old Dragonguard. Then they ran out of dragons to slay, and their priorities changed. You might say the knowledge rendered itself obsolete. But the Blades never wholly forgot that Alduin would eventually return. Apart from what the Akaviri left to us, the Dragonborn Emperors allowed us access to the prophecies of the Moth Priests.”

“So there were always people like you, writing it down for the Blades who came after,” Eyhild says.

His smile is wistful. “I suppose so. I was only able to save a few scraps from the Blades archives… But they had a failsafe or two, as well. Look at this.”

He passes the book to her, holding it open to a page that she has to cast her own magelight to make out. The province map of Skyrim is painted there in an unfamiliar, fluid style.

“It's beautiful,” she says.

“Yes, it's an excellent copy of the original Akaviri. But you see, right here, how they marked what is now known as the Karthspire? Sky Haven Temple, constructed around one of the main Akiviri military camps in the Reach, during their conquest of Skyrim. The location of Alduin's Wall isn't lost, after all, just forgotten.”

She blinks at him. “There was an Akaviri temple in Skyrim? Do the Thalmor know?”

“My dear girl, it wasn’t the only one! If the Thalmor could find it, though, I doubt they would go to so much trouble to find me. It’s safe enough. Haven’t you heard of Alduin’s Wall?”

“Is it like the memorial walls in the old tombs?” He tilts his head in confusion, so Eyhild explains, “They’re written in the dragon tongue, and they… call to me, somehow. It’s how I’ve been learning the words to Shout.”

“That would be fascinating,” he muses, “but I doubt it. The Akaviri did not use that tongue themselves. Yet they did set down in stone all they knew of Alduin and his return. Part history, part prophecy, a hedge against the forgetfulness of centuries.”

“Lucky for us,” Eyhild says.

“Foresighted of them, rather, assuming we can read it.”

“Did they know how to defeat him?”

He chuckles. “Delphine asked the same question. There’s no guarantee, of course, but she agreed that it’s our best lead.”

“We don’t have much else to go on,” says Eyhild, studying the map. “It will take a few days to get there, and that’s just to start looking.”

“More traveling, I know. We’ll make our preparations in the morning.”

Orgnar is asleep by the hearth in the kitchen, so Eyhild folds cold rabbit haunch into a slice of bread and wanders out the side door, into a small kitchen garden. The northern lights are a vague rose-colored glow behind the scattered clouds, casting no shadows. The rush of the river seems loud in the blind night.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” says a voice, making her jump.

“Ralof! What are you doing out here?”

Her friend is perched on the woodpile with his elbows resting on his knees. He looks tired and travel-stained, in hunter’s leathers, but as she turns he sits up straighter with a sheepish smile. “I just got back into town and I didn’t want to wake my sister. The guards like to pretend not to see me, but it’s best to stay out back and make it easy for them.”

“Orgnar’s asleep. Here, I’ll get myself something later,” she says, and she hands him the makeshift sandwich.

“Hey, thanks.”

As he stands up to take the food, his sword hilt catches the light; at first she thinks it is only the aurora making colors strange. Then she recognizes the feathered motif and knows that it is moonstone, not steel. She can hardly blame Ralof for despoiling some Thalmor soldier, but she knows he was not fighting for the townspeople’s sake.

“You’re scouting Whiterun’s defenses, aren’t you?” she says. In Windhelm an attack on Jarl Balgruuf’s city seemed inevitable, and the dread of it was oppressive. She thought she was free of it, but the sudden sharp fear is worse: any sign of bad faith, even an accident of outdated orders, could ruin her newfound hope. “Ralof, you’ll start a war!”

His soft laughter is despairing. “Eyhild, we’ve been at war a long time now. The sooner Whiterun chooses a side, the sooner it’s over.”

“Why, because it won’t end until all of Skyrim lies in ruins?” she retorts. “Every time Jarl Balgruuf sends a messenger back unanswered, the farmers gain one more season to keep us all from starving. Do you think they’ll thank you? You’re planning to invade your own home.”

“I hope not! Ulfric can’t afford to bluff, that’s all. Balgruuf may yet join us, and then we’ll use what I’ve learned to defend him.” He speaks soothingly, trying to placate her, but it only makes her angry.

“He won’t,” she says coldly. “At least, not against the Empire. Things have changed. Does Ulfric have other soldiers in Whiterun Hold?”

“You know I can’t answer that.” He recoils, as if he had forgotten until now that she is one of Balgruuf’s thanes. “Why? What’s happened?”

“I’ve been to Windhelm,” she says with a huff, sitting down on the kitchen steps. After a moment, seeing that it will not provoke her further, Ralof sits down beside her.

She tells him about the dossier. At first he reacts with suspicion, wanting to believe the notebook itself could be a trap Elenwen had laid for spies to find. Eyhild does not try to argue the unlikelihood of such an elaborate plot, but carries on with her story: skipping over Riften and the affairs of the Blades, she describes Ulfric’s reaction to the news and his decision to go to Whiterun for help. He curls in on himself as she goes on, looking overwhelmed, until finally he puts his head in his hands.

“So you see, if you offend Balgruuf now—”

“Aye,” he agrees without looking up, unwilling even to put the terrible thought into words. Eyhild rests a steadying hand on his shoulder and waits, sorry to have burdened him with such important news when he was already tired. He is her friend, but she is not sure what he will do next.

In a moment he says, “I don’t believe Ulfric would betray Skyrim.”

“Maybe not on purpose, but his loyalty isn’t enough. He’s been part of the Dominion’s plans since the White-Gold Concordat.”

“But if he calls the Moot…” He raises his head, shaking off weariness. “Maybe it’s not too late. I don’t know that the Empire will accept any compromise, but if the jarls are willing to try, if no one else has to die for this…”

“You should go to Whiterun and find out,” Eyhild says.

His face lights up with a brilliant, wondering smile. “I will. What about you? Both sides would listen to the Dragonborn.”

The thought of actively wielding the Nords’ respect for her title makes her flinch even now, but she smiles back at Ralof. “I still have dragons to fight.”

“You say that every time,” he says, his smile fading. “I know it’s true enough, but do you never think about the future?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you hadn’t found that dossier, if you didn’t have responsibilities to your College of Winterhold… Surely you prefer one side to the other, even if you have reason not to join?”

She doesn’t answer, but he sees it in her face. “Your heart is with the Empire, then. Oh, Eyhild.”

“The jarls must make peace,” she says quietly. “I will not use the Voice to end it unless I have no other choice.”


End file.
